The Kingdom of God Is Within You, Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy [books to read fiction .TXT] 📗

be

stabbed, for his adversary is infuriated and has a knife in his

hand. And therefore, whether their conscience is tender or the

reverse, our rich men cannot enjoy the wealth they have filched

from the poor as the ancients did who believed in their right to

it. Their whole life and all their enjoyments are embittered

either by the stings of conscience or by terror.

 

So much for the economic contradiction. The political

contradiction is even more striking.

 

All men are brought up to the habit of obeying the laws of the

state before everything. The whole existence of modern times is

defined by laws. A man marries and is divorced, educates his

children, and even (in many countries) professes his religious

faith in accordance with the law. What about the law then which

defines our whose existence? Do men believe in it? Do they

regard it as good? Not at all. In the majority of cases people

of the present time do not believe in the justice of the law, they

despise it, but still they obey it. It was very well for the

men of the ancient world to observe their laws. They firmly

believed that their law (it was generally of a religious

character) was the only just law, which everyone ought to obey.

But is it so with us? we know and cannot help knowing that the law

of our country is not the one eternal law; that it is only one of

the many laws of different countries, which are equally imperfect,

often obviously wrong and unjust, and are criticised from every

point of view in the newspapers. The Jew might well obey his

laws, since he had not the slightest doubt that God had written

them with his finger; the Roman too might well obey the laws which

he thought had been dictated by the nymph Egeria. Men might well

observe the laws if they believed the Tzars who made them were

God’s anointed, or even if they thought they were the work of

assemblies of lawgivers who had the power and the desire to make

them as good as possible. But we all know how our laws are

made. We have all been behind the scenes, we know that they are

the product of covetousness, trickery, and party struggles; that

there is not and cannot be any real justice in them. And so

modern men cannot believe that obedience to civic or political

laws can satisfy the demands of the reason or of human nature.

Men have long ago recognized that it is irrational to obey a law

the justice of which is very doubtful, and so they cannot but

suffer in obeying a law which they do not accept as judicious and

binding.

 

A man cannot but suffer when his whole life is defined beforehand

for him by laws, which he must obey under threat of punishment,

though he does not believe in their wisdom or justice, and often

clearly perceives their injustice, cruelty, and artificiality.

 

We recognize the uselessness of customs and import duties, and are

obliged to pay them. We recognize the uselessness of the

expenditure on the maintenance of the Court and other members of

Government, and we regard the teaching of the Church as injurious,

but we are obliged to bear our share of the expenses of these

institutions. We regard the punishments inflicted by law as cruel

and shameless, but we must assist in supporting them. We regard

as unjust and pernicious the distribution of landed property, but

we are obliged to submit to it. We see no necessity for wars and

armies, but we must bear terribly heavy burdens in support of

troops and war expenses.

 

But this contradiction is nothing in comparison with the

contradiction which confronts us when we turn to international

questions, and which demands a solution, under pain of the loss of

the sanity and even the existence of the human race. That is the

contradiction between the Christian conscience and war.

 

We are all Christian nations living the same spiritual life, so

that every noble and pregnant thought, springing up at one end of

the world, is at once communicated to the whole of Christian

humanity and evokes everywhere the same emotion at pride and

rejoicing without distinction of nationalities. We who love

thinkers, philanthropists, poets, and scientific men of foreign

origin, and are as proud of the exploits of Father Damien as if he

were one of ourselves, we, who have a simple love for men of

foreign nationalities, Frenchmen, Germans, Americans, and

Englishmen, who respect their qualities, are glad to meet them and

make them so warmly welcome, cannot regard war with them as

anything heroic. We cannot even imagine without horror the

possibility of a disagreement between these people and ourselves

which would call for reciprocal murder. Yet we are all bound to

take a hand in this slaughter which is bound to come to pass tomorrow not to-day.

 

It was very well for the Jew, the Greek, and the Roman to defend

the independence of his nation by murder. For he piously believed

that his people was the only true, fine, and good people dear to

God, and all the rest were Philistines, barbarians. Men of

medieval times—even up to the end of the last and beginning of

this century—might continue to hold this belief. But however

much we work upon ourselves we cannot believe it. And this

contradiction for men of the present day has become so full of

horror that without its solution life is no longer possible.

 

“We live in a time which is full of inconsistencies,” writes Count

Komarovsky, the professor of international law, in his learned

treatise.

 

“The press of ail countries is continually expressing the

universal desire for peace, and the general sense of its

necessity for all nations.

 

“Representatives of governments, private persons, and official

organs say the same thing; it is repeated in parliamentary

debates, diplomatic correspondence, and even in state treaties.

At the same time governments are increasing the strength of

their armies every year, levying fresh taxes, raising loans,

and leaving as a bequest to future generations the duty of

repairing the blunders of the senseless policy of the present.

What a striking contrast between words and deeds! Of course

governments will plead in justification of these measures that

all their expenditure and armament are exclusively for purposes

of defense. But it remains a mystery to every disinterested

man whence they can expect attacks if all the great powers are

single-hearted in their policy, in pursuing nothing but self

defense. In reality it looks as if each of the great powers

were every instant anticipating an attack on the part of the

others. And this results in a general feeling of insecurity

and superhuman efforts on the part of each government to

increase their forces beyond those of the other powers. Such a

competition of itself increases the danger of war. Nations

cannot endure the constant increase of armies for long, and

sooner or later they will prefer war to all the disadvantages

of their present position and the constant menace of war. Then

the most trifling pretext will be sufficient to throw the whole

of Europe into the fire of universal war. And it is a mistaken

idea that such a crisis might deliver us from the political and

economical troubles that are crushing us. The experience of

the wars of latter years teaches us that every war has only

intensified national hatreds, made military burdens more

crushing and insupportable, and rendered the political and

economical grievous and insoluble.”

 

“Modern Europe keeps under arms an active army of nine millions of

men,” writes Enrico Ferri,

 

“besides fifteen millions of reserve, with an outlay of four

hundred millions of francs per annum. By continual increase of

the armed force, the sources of social and individual

prosperity are paralyzed, and the state of the modern world may

be compared to that of a man who condemns himself to wasting

from lack of nutrition in order to provide himself with arms,

losing thereby the strength to use the arms he provides, under,

the weight of which he will at last succumb.”

 

Charles Booth, in his paper read in London before the Association

for the Reform and Codification of the Law of Nations, June 26,

1887, says the same thing. After referring to the same number,

nine millions of the active army and fifteen millions of reserve,

and the enormous expenditure of governments on the support and

arming of these forces, he says:

 

“These figures represent only a small part of the real cost,

because besides the recognized expenditure of the war budget of

the various nations, we ought also to take into account the

enormous loss to society involved in withdrawing from it such

an immense number of its most vigorous men, who are taken from

industrial pursuits and every kind of labor, as well as the

enormous interest on the sums expended on military preparations

without any return. The inevitable result of this expenditure

on war and preparations for war is a continually growing

national debt. The greater number of loans raised by the

governments of Europe were with a view to war. Their total sum

amounts to four hundred millions sterling, and these debts are

increasing every year.”

 

The same Professor Komarovsky says in another place:

 

“We live in troubled times. Everywhere we hear complaints of

the depression of trade and manufactures, and the wretchedness

of the economic position generally, the miserable conditions of

existence of the working classes, and the universal

impoverishment of the masses. But in spite of this, governments

in their efforts to maintain their independence rush to the

greatest extremes of senselessness. New taxes and duties are

being devised everywhere, and the financial oppression of the

nations knows no limits. If we glance at the budgets of the

states of Europe for the last hundred years, what strikes us

most of all is their rapid and continually growing increase.

 

“How can we explain this extraordinary phenomenon which sooner

or later threatens us all with inevitable bankruptcy?

 

“It is caused beyond dispute by the expenditure for the

maintenance of armaments which swallows up a third and even a

half of all the expenditure of European states. And the most

melancholy thing is that one can foresee no limit to this

augmentation of the budget and impoverishment of the masses.

What is socialism but a protest against this abnormal position

in which the greater proportion of the population of our world

is placed?

 

“We are ruining ourselves,” says Frederick Passy in a letter read

before the last Congress of Universal Peace (in 1890) in London,

 

“we are ruining ourselves in order to be able to take part in

the senseless wars of the future or to pay the interest on

debts we have incurred by the senseless and criminal wars of

the past. We are dying of hunger so as to secure the means of

killing each other.”

 

Speaking later on of the way the subject is looked at in France,

he says:

 

“We believe that, a hundred years after the Declaration of the

Rights of Man and of the citizen, the time has come to

recognize the rights of nations and to renounce at once and

forever all those undertakings based on fraud and force, which,

under the name of conquests, are veritable crimes against

humanity, and which, whatever the vanity of monarchs and the

pride of nations may think of them, only weaken even those who

are triumphant over them.”

 

“I am surprised at the way religion is carried on in this

country,” said Sir Wilfrid Lawson at the same congress.

 

“You send a boy to Sunday school, and you tell him: ‘Dear boy,

you must love your